


You Invited Me To Your Sixth Birthday Party, Remember?

by orphan_account



Category: Homestar Runner
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Kissing, M/M, One Shot, i just want you all to know that cuz my autistic ass loves projecting onto my fave characters, the cheat is autistic but that's only vaguely hinted at and not important to the story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 14:02:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20437220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: (Uses different names for the characters, see notes for name guide)Brett comes over to the Gallo household to get his wallet back, and gets feelings instead.





	You Invited Me To Your Sixth Birthday Party, Remember?

**Author's Note:**

> Homestar: Brett Armstrong  
Strong Bad: Zack Gallo  
Marzipan:Sherry Draper  
Strong Sad: Ian Gallo  
Strong Mad: Jack Gallo  
The Cheat: Cris "The Cheat" Wallace  
(also I'm not going to write out Homestar's speech impediment but rest assured he has it)

There was a knock at the door. Zack ignored it.  
The doorbell rang. He continued to ignore it.

"Zack! Zack! Zachary Gallo are you here? Hello?"

That was the voice of Brett Armstrong. Stupid surf-blond, 6-foot-something jock. Zack super ignored it.

He probably would have continued to ignore it if Jack's weird dog Sneak hadn't started barking at the door. There was no chance he could get that thing to shut up unless he answered. He got up from the couch and made his way to the entrance of the house, pushing the oddly-proportioned golden-retriever mix out of the way, and opened the door.

"Hi Zack, hi doggi-- ew ew ew ew ew, gross." Brett said as the mutt slobbered over his outstretched hand and made pathetic-dog-noises, "Hi Zack! You took so long to get the door, I thought you weren't home! I almost went away."

"That would have been too bad..." Zack said, hoping Brett could detect his seething sarcasm and annoyance. Brett could not; he just kept on grinning, baring perfectly white teeth. Despite being well into young adulthood, Brett still wore braces on his bottom teeth, which was a fact that Zack always remembered to tease him for whenever he had the misfortune of bumping into him on campus. He would never admit this, but he was a little bit jealous of Brett's teeth.

He only realized he had been staring at Brett's mouth in silence for the past few seconds when Brett moved to enter the house, pushing the door open and stepping in like he lived there.

"Hey, dude!!" Zack sputtered, trying to stop him, "And by the way, how do you even know where I live?"

"Oh you invited me to your sixth birthday party, remember?" He explained with nonchalance as he pet Sneak on the belly.

"Right, I'm just going to pretend that's not totally creepy so I can ask you why you are in my house."

Brett stared at him with a totally blank expression for much longer than was comfortable, as if he had completely forgotten why he had come here in the first place.

"Uhm... Oh, right! Your little brother stole my wallet!"

"Wait, Ian stole your wallet? Are you sure you've got the right guy? Chubby, emo, looks like he has some kind of respiratory disease?"

"What? No!" Brett furrowed his eyebrows, as if he was insulted by the fact that Zack wasn't sure who he was referring to, "I don't even know who you're talking about. I mean your little brother with the freckles who doesn't say anything!"

"You mean Cris? That's my little cousin, man." There was a moment of silence before Zack burst out laughing.

"HA! You seriously got your wallet stolen by a fifteen year old? A little high school kid?" He shrieked, "That is seriously too much! Oh man,"

Brett started to laugh as well, "Yeah, it's pretty funny, isn't it." It didn't seem like his pride had been hurt at all by admitting this, which totally killed the fun for Zack who stopped laughing.

"Hm, well, Cris isn't home right now," he said, bitter.

"Oh, that's okay, I'll just wait until he gets here."

And before Zack could protest, Brett was already wandering into the kitchen looking for something to eat.

Zack didn't want to let this guy wander around his house unsupervised, so the two of them ended up in the living room, sitting on opposite ends of the couch and watching cartoon reruns.

Brett, with a mouth full of stale marshmallows, pulled his phone out of his sweatshirt pocket and frowned. the phone was on silent, but the screen seemed to flash with nonstop notifications.

"Aw man," he muttered, not bothering to swallow his food, "I was supposed to meet up with Sherry an hour ago."

"You're still with Sherry?" Zack asked, turning to look intently at the guy he had been trying to ignore for the past thirty minutes. Why did he care?

"Well, not really. We broke up last week. We were supposed to meet for our post break up discussion on whether or not we were going to un-break up. Probably not now, huh?"

"Yeah, definitely not." Zack said, trying to hide a smile. He wasn't sure why he wanted to smile. As much as this guy pissed him off, being excited about someone else's breakup was kinda sick. Was he excited about Sherry being back on the market? No, she hated his guts regardless.

"So, what about you, are you seeing anyone?" Brett asked, snapping the other out of his thoughts.

"Not really," come on man, lame answer, "I mean, not really ‘cause I get so many hot girls' numbers that I can't pick just one!" Nice save.

"Yeah, I bet you do." Brett said it completely genuinely and without malice, but Zack still felt mocked by the reply.

The commercials ended and Brett's attention was drawn back to the TV, ending that conversation completely. It was another couple hours before anyone said anything else.

"You know, I miss when we used to hang out like this back when we were younger." Brett said suddenly. His tone was warm and genuine.

"I don't," Zack quipped.

Brett was silent. Of all the times he had tried to insult him, why had this one actually got him?

"Uh, hey dude, I-- wait, are you crying?" Zack asked. Brett had turned away from him, his shaking shoulders giving away the answer, "Come on man, this is totally weird, stop that." Zack grabbed Brett's shoulders and turned him so they were facing each other.

"I just think you're cool and I don't know why you don't like me anymore," Brett said, in an unusually serious and somber tone not usually reserved for the ditzy jock, "Did I do something to make you stop being friends with me?"

Zack fumbled for a reply, feeling deeply uncomfortable with the situation he was in. He resented Brett for his perfect life, and how he could be dumb as a brick and never face any consequences for his actions or have any real responsibility. That made Zack angry, it made him want to knock the guy down a few pegs, sure, but it wasn't like Brett had actually done any specific thing.

As he had been thinking about this, and stalling with little "um"s and "it's not that..."s, Brett had been staring at him quietly, with that blank expression he got when he was thinking harder than he was used to.

"Dude, you're just--" and he was interrupted by Brett leaning in to kiss him. It was incredibly chaste, but it lasted longer than either of them expected it to.

"Dude, what the hell."

A pained and uncertain noise was all Brett could manage in reply.

"Was that the real reason you came over?"

"No.. I really did get my wallet stolen..." he groaned, "Now you think I'm some kinda homo, huh?"

"Uh, no way. My irresistible features defy the boundaries of gender, I can't help being this attractive." Zack said, trying to diffuse the tense situation.

"I see," nodded Brett, as if the joke had genuinely put his mind at ease.

"Anyway, you're a terrible kisser. No wonder Sherry dumped you."

"Was I really that bad?"

"You had your teeth out. You nearly cut me with your braces. It was super weird."

"Oh, sorry." He said shyly, "Aw man, now I feel worse."

"Don't feel bad. Look, I'll show you how to do it." Zack scooted over to him and cupped his face in his palm, "First you've gotta do this, so they know it's coming. You can't just kiss someone out of nowhere, or you'll freak 'em out."

Brett nodded, his face scrunched up in determination. Zack couldn't stop thinking about how cute this would be if it were a girl sitting next to him instead.

"And then you've gotta lean in, with your face tilted-- and don't smile!"

"Wow, where did you learn all this?" Brett asked. Their lips were close enough together that Zack could feel the air of his words. The honest answer was from watching movies, but Zack didn't want to admit that, so he just kissed him.

Brett gave a little contented hum and Zack pulled away instantly.

"Don't make noises like that. You're making this weird."

"Right, sorry."

At some point, the "no noises" rule was forgotten; sometime after Zack had slipped his tongue into Brett's mouth, and sometime before Brett had climbed onto Zack's lap. Zack's hands pawed at the soft fabric of Brett's sweater, while Brett's fingers were tangled up in Zack's long, greasy hair.

The two were interrupted by the sound of a bookbag hitting the floor, and both of them turned in horror to see Cris Wallace staring at them wide-eyed from the doorway.

He had one hand clamped firmly over his mouth, and the other flapping wildly at the wrist. He was clearly not sure how to process this.

"Uhm," Brett cleared his throat, "Could I please have my wallet back, maybe? It's really cool that you stole it when I wasn't looking, but it has my ID in it and I need that to get dinner..."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Please comment if you have any thoughts, even if they're not coherent thoughts. And please tell me how my portrayal of these characters is; I'm new to the fandom and it's my first time writing them.


End file.
